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Big-splash Burke pulls trigger on Kessel deal

For the 10th time in the past 20 years, the Maple Leafs have sacrificed a first-round selection in the NHL entry draft to make a significant trade.

Most of the time it hasn't worked out, at least not for the Leafs, so the easy reflex reaction on the Phil Kessel deal is to say, "Here we go again."

That said, on none of those previous occasions was the club receiving a 21-year-old winger who had already scored 30 goals in the NHL.

Once it was 27-year-old defenceman Tom Kurvers. Another time a first-rounder was spent to bring back 29-year-old Wendel Clark. Owen Nolan, then 31, was acquired in 2003, and part of the cost was a first-round pick. Brian Leetch was celebrating his 36th birthday the day the Leafs acquired him for a deal that included a first-rounder.

That, quite clearly, is the compelling difference with the Kessel deal. He's not 27 or 29 or 31 or 36. He's 21, 22 next month, and to put that in perspective, he was selected in the 2006 draft eight picks ahead of Jiri Tlusty, a player the Leafs still view as a prospect.

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Kessel was the top scoring winger on one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference last year and a divisional rival of the Leafs, the Boston Bruins. The B's surely wanted to retain his services, but they squeezed themselves on the salary cap – $3.3 million for Derek Morris? – and Leafs GM Brian Burke did the rest of the squeezing, threatening a free agent offer sheet if Boston GM Peter Chiarelli wouldn't trade Kessel to the Leafs.

Make no mistake about it, there will be some sore feelings between Burke and Chiarelli on this one. Burke schemed with the agent, Wade Arnott, to make Kessel both unaffordable for the Bruins and essentially unreachable. It wasn't a Dany Heatley situation, but it wasn't far from that, either.

Chiarelli undoubtedly feels bullied on this one. He would have preferred a player and even inquired as to whether the Leafs would be willing to put Nazem Kadri in the deal.

There was no chance of that happening. Burke wouldn't do it at the June draft, and also turned down overtures from Tampa Bay for the seventh overall pick. Right now, it appears the Leafs have done well hanging on to that selection and drafting Kadri.

Still, Chiarelli got two firsts and a second, and the thing about dealing first rounders is you never quite know what you're trading or getting. Certainly that was the case on Oct. 16, 1989, when Leaf GM Floyd Smith moved his first-rounder to New Jersey for Kurvers, and that pick turned into Scott Niedermayer.

Theoretically, something similar could happen with the Kessel deal as well. For starters, if the Leafs can't get goaltending out of Vesa Toskala and Jonas Gustavsson this season, there's a very real chance the 2010 first-rounder could be a top-10 pick or higher.

But Burke believes he has protected himself, first by doing well on the selection of Kadri, and second by adding Tyler Bozak and Christian Hanson as college free agents. He also loves Kessel, sees him as similar to the dynamic wide receiver who stretches the field for a football team, a speed burner whose quiet, introverted personality has been misinterpreted by others as either aloofness or dimness.

Really, it's similar in some ways to a deal made 15 years ago when the Leafs gave up Clark, then their heart-and-soul, along with defenceman Sylvain Lefebvre, prospect Landon Wilson and a first-round pick, to the Quebec Nordiques for a package that featured a 23-year-old Swede named Mats Sundin.

Sundin had scored 47 goals in a season for the Nords, but he was seen as an emotionless player and Quebec wanted other commodities for a team that was only two years and one relocation away from a championship. There were howls of protest in Toronto and the price of acquiring Sundin seemed outlandish, but the deal turned out to be one of Cliff Fletcher's best.

The Kessel trade, of course, fits with Burke's make-a-big-splash-early history. He moved heaven and earth to land Chris Pronger for Hartford. He bagged the Sedin twins for Vancouver. Now he's arm-twisted the unwilling Bruins into trading Kessel.

Of course there is risk for the Leafs, but arguably greater risk for Boston, which acquired Kessel through the draft just three years ago as a franchise-type player and may be unable to turn their newly acquired first-round picks into NHL talent.

The Leafs haven't lost anything tangible yet. The Bruins have.

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